Like the thread title states. What are the worst books ever? I got inspiration from the worst movie thread a while ago, and I am sort of curious about the worst books. I can´t really think of anything good (err, bad) right now, but I´ll go look throught the shelves for those baddies, and post them soon.
Years ago, after watching "Apocalypse Now", I decided to read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". It was almost impossible to read, don't bother.
Likewise. I couldn't tell if it was really good and I was missing something, or if it was really bad. But considering it's a literary classic, I'm guessing we're missing something. I did finish it though!
"Jack drew his MP5, a 9 mm submachine gun of German design, developed in the 1960s by a team of engineers from the West German arms manufacturer Heckler & Koch GmbH (H&K) of Oberndorf am Neckar. The company, motivated by the success of the G3 automatic rifle, developed a family of small arms consisting of four types of firearms (all based on a common G3 design layout and operating principle), where the first type was chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO, the second using the 7.62x39mm M43 round, third the intermediate 5.56x45mm NATO caliber and the fourth type chambering the 9x19mm Parabellum pistol cartridge. The MP5 (short for Maschinenpistole 5) was created within the fourth group of firearms, initially known as the HK54..."
Dan Brown - Digital Fortress. Not only is the plot absolutely ridiculous (the whole NSA is operated by 4 borderline crazy people over the weekend, right), but you even notice exactly where the point came when Brown didn't want to research anymore, but stopped looking up how his stuff works in reality and just wrote how he imagined a hacker attack would work. I still can't figure out why I read this book to the very last page.
I've never gotten to read a bad book. If I'm not engaged in the first chapter/pages I simply put it down. No need to suffer with a bad reading.
I took a math class many years ago, the textbook used had been written by the teacher. All questions were referred back to "it's in my book". The guy was an idiot and his crappy book was no better.
Stole the text off my keyboard. Like everyone else, I read Angels and Demons and then The DaVinci Code and thought they were entertaining grocery store check out line books, so I thought I'd give Digital Fortress a try. Crap what a waste of time. The only thing I could think of during the end sequence was how dumb the main characters were... ugh. Next in line for me is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I just started reading the entire series recently and am having serious trouble getting through it. I figured it's a pop sci-fi comedy must-read, but damn it's bad. Really bad. -R
Ulysses. After ten or so attempts, I still can't muster enough energy/masochism to read it all the way through. It's not that I dislike "difficult" books - I hugely enjoyed the Satanic Verses (of course, it is much simpler than Ulysses - Rushdie is an infant while Joyce is the great grand-daddy of obscurantist geniuses).
that pretty much nails it. Are they novels or editions of Jane's military journals with characters added?
I'm curious why you didn't like it. It certainly could have used an edit and been about 200 pages shorter. While I don't think it is that well-written, the philosophy is interesting.
If you didn't like the first one, why in hell would you read through the entire series? They're all about the same. . .
Actually, that's not quite true. The series starts off relatively zany and chipper but it becomes progressively darker and ends on a *really* bum note. But I suppose that's one reason why it's so kewl - pulling the rug out from under the fanbois' fancies is all the rage nowadays.
Celestine Prophecy. Digital Fortress. Angels and Demons. The Book of Pi (3.141592653.... to 185 pages).